A great many appliances such as hand held tools and portable equipment such as generators, pumps, and the like, are motor driven, either by electric motors or by internal combustion engines. In many cases, each powered appliance is commercially provided with its own dedicated power plant and/or source (for example, electric motor or internal combustion engine). Consequently, capital costs, bulk, and weight of the many appliances may be maximized. Logical physical layout of the many appliances is often difficult to achieve.
Modular appliances having removable and replaceable power plants have been proposed. However, these frequently require tedious assembly such as installation of threaded fasteners and the like, often not lending themselves to a logical physical layout facilitating moving workpieces from one appliance to another.
There remains a need for more practical ways of establishing mechanical and/or functional connections of appliances to their respective power plants/sources, for improving replaceability of power plants/sources and power driven appliances, and for making power/source plant-appliance combinations more compact and versatile.